


Noise.

by Bakuras



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Character Study, Child Abuse, Death-T, Death-T (Yu-Gi-Oh), Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:27:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28370133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bakuras/pseuds/Bakuras
Summary: A short character study of the early life of Seto Kaiba.  Headcanon heavy.
Kudos: 10





	Noise.

Seto Kaiba breathes through his own lungs for the first time in years. 

His body is his own. The  _ thing _ that clutched his heart like a cancer and  _ drove _ him like a parasite had been purged. It wasn’t a clean cut - over the course of six months he  _ gouged _ it out himself, separating the pulpy flesh of his heart from the rotten cells woven into it, and blackening his fingers ringing tar from his arteries. Yugi - or  _ Atem _ , as he knows him now - could have driven the knife through him without remorse, and he’d be right to do so. He didn’t. 

Atem handed him the knife and showed him how to kill the thick slather of ooze coating his soul. Like a butcher cutting out fat. And Kaiba - who decided then, as a child again, that he  _ wanted _ to live, sat for six months, working to make himself whole. 

The first thing Kaiba does is throw up.

It isn’t much. He hasn’t been fed properly in all that time, so what he expels is entirely water and bile. 

There’s thunder outside. And it’s there, with his skin battered with raindrops and water weighing down his clothes like a blanket, that there isn’t an aspect of what he’s done that doesn’t hit him like a car.

_ Seto Kaiba fastened electric chairs to a roller coaster. Working electric chairs. Chairs haunted with the real, gruesome deaths of hundreds. Machines that cooked living people inside out, sometimes unsuccessfully, almost always slowly. _

_ Seto Kaiba sat across from a man who hacked children to death, children no older than Mokuba, telling him to do it again. _

_ Seto Kaiba kept his eyes transfixed to his own monitor, eagerly anticipating the crunch of bone and squelch of muscle and fat as Hiroto Honda was trapped by heavy falling blocks.  _

_... _

_ Seto Kaiba trapped his own brother, who he loved beyond words, beyond reason and logic and  _ **_trauma_ ** _ , in a room designed to simulate his own torture.  _

His hands find the ground, and he collapses to it. 

Seto Kaiba cries like he’s been  _ shot _ . 

\- - - 

“The chemical makeup is different from Adderall, father.” 

Gozaburo snorts. “You think my scientists would prescribe  _ my son _ some shit-grade pills for sleepy college students?” 

“No, but-” 

“Then take it.” 

“But it’s not even  _ related-” _

“Oh? And you know that  _ how _ ,  _ Seto _ ?”

“ _ Because _ it’s _ c-” _

Gozaburo’s hand hovers over a small red ring. Seto doesn’t flinch, of course, but not because he isn’t afraid. It’s the same as a horse that doesn’t balk at a whip anymore. Showing it makes it worse. 

Still, his mouth closes. He looks back at the lines on the mirror. 

Even when Gozaburo distances his hand from the ring, Seto doesn’t relax. 

“You’re lucky you’re smart.” Gozaburo chuckles. “Actually, you have no idea how lucky you  _ are _ that you’re smart.”

He does have  _ some _ idea, though. Flashes of red when he uses the computer, leaving him dazed and sick. Waking up to hands in his hair that quickly retreat, prodding at the place where his spine meets his skull. 

( Still. He doesn’t hear the name Noah until he’s almost seventeen. So maybe, for now, Gozaburo is half right. )

“But say it, Seto.” He continues. “Say the name of what I gave you.” 

Most children would swallow and hesitate at this point. Allow themselves to be intimidated into silence. But the collar around his neck doesn’t spark. If Gozaburo wanted him intimidated, he would be. 

“Cocaine.”

His stepfather pauses. Seto’s eyes flick to the ring, but Gozaburo makes no move to touch it. Instead, after a moment, he nods, gesturing back toward the mirror. 

Seto Kaiba is thirteen.

\- - - 

The new student is neat. 

Neat, not  _ just _ in terms of his appearance - straightened brown hair cut to his shoulders, tailored white uniform without so much as a crease in the fabric - but also in the inherent intrigue that surrounds him. Polite as his exterior would suggest, yes. But he smiles with a grin too practiced. Speaks with a voice too close to honey. 

When Seto Kaiba looks at Yugi, even with the positioning of his pupils exact, it doesn’t  _ feel _ like eye contact. 

Something about him makes Yugi’s stomach turn.

But Yugi is, of course, as kind as Kaiba pretends to be. So when he’s invited to his home, he silences the part of his mind that evolved to pick out wolves from sheep.

He steps onto the ice above the undertow. Pretends not to notice the force and speed of the current beneath.

Still, as it turns out, wolves don’t wear sheepskin as well as they hope.

Something in Yugi is drawn to him, though. It’s a part that  _ isn’t _ Yugi. A currently-dormant piece of his consciousness that matches Kaiba’s dangerous nature. It soothes him. Ensures him he doesn’t need to run. 

Yugi, for reasons he doesn’t yet understand, feels himself hunting Kaiba back. 

\- - -

Kaiba never wanted to die before. 

Not  _ only _ because killing himself meant leaving no barrier between Gozaburo and Mokuba - though he’d be lying if he said that didn’t play a role. But despite  _ all of that _ -

_ S-Seto, what’s in your arm?  _

_ ( Mokuba run. Run. Run. ) _

_ Ha! It’s nothing, Mokuba! I wasn’t feeling well, so one of the nurses Gozaburo keeps on staff fixed me up! Go back to bed, okay?  _

_ ( Don’t let him find you don’t let him see you stay out of his sight - ) _

\- His determination to stay alive only fortifies itself. 

_ Gozaburo Kaiba  _ would not win. 

\- - - 

He wants to die, but only now. 

...No, it’s not that. He  _ has _ died. A hundred times by now. Eviscerated, pulled apart, crushed, digested. No one hears him. He’s screaming like a slaughtered  _ lamb _ and no one hears him.

He wants to  _ be _ dead. He wants to  **_stay_ ** dead.

It’s not about winning anymore, he wants it to destroy him. 

End it. 

_ Please _ .

\- - - 

The person who wakes up is not the person the demon punished. 

He gasps for air for a long time. Then, pulls his long hair back and ties it. 

Seto Kaiba draws five white lines on a mirror. 

“Show me the Kaibaland blueprints.” He says to nobody. A robotic voice speaks back. 

“Bringing up Kaibaland files, Mister Kaiba.” 

“Not all of it.” 

He winces. Pinches the bridge of his nose. 

_ That never gets easier.  _

“Give me the blueprints for the inner sanctum.”

**Author's Note:**

> death-t kaiba owns my ass ALSO stream my death-t playlist <3 https://open.spotify.com/playlist/02XTo9aQVMXbAERksMzIO8?si=eL9b__r6RHO6HanY8QufmQ


End file.
